


Belles Reves

by Rabbit



Category: Fairy Tales (trad)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:45:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabbit/pseuds/Rabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beauty and the Beast ShortFic. Beauty dreams of a Prince in the Garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belles Reves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kazuko1](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kazuko1).



> Happy Stocking Stuffer, and enjoy!

Beauty walks in the garden at night, when her eyes are closed and she is nominally lying in her bed. Every night, night after night, when the jasmine-scent comes in through her window and the moon glows bright and full, or sickle-shaped and narrow, or not there any at all, every night, night after night, Beauty dreams.

Beauty walks in the garden in her dreams, and the breath of the night-blooming things fills her nostrils and she hums with the songs of the crickets and the frogs, and her feet find the same path every time, although the garden is not the same in the night as it is during the day. In the day it is a fairly simple, straightforward garden, with it's hedges and neatly laid out rows and flowers, though it is very, very beautiful. At night there is something wild about it, the vines and creepers overgrown, and the heavy blooms dripping from trees and trellises. In the night, it seems as if Things live in the garden, creeping things and clawed things, things more terrible and more frightening even than the Beast who keeps her here, although she is not afraid. Not in the night, on the path that her feet know, over the white stone path, smooth under the soles of her naked feet.

In the daylight, there is no white stone path, in the garden.

The garden is a labyrinth in her dreams, one that she knows as well as Theseus knew the length and breadth of Ariadne's thread. Sometimes the path is very long and sometimes very short, but it is the same path, and she knows it well. Her feet know it well. At the end of the path, Beauty finds the Prince.

The Prince is very lovely, and very sad. His hair is the color of honey and his eyes are like baptismal fonts, are like the stones of lapis that come on her father's merchant ships from the far-off orient, are like the cobalt rosettes in the stained glass windows of the castle, the cobalt seas over which sail fierce glass gallions, speeding hither and yon. His hands are soft and elegant, and he speaks to her, when she comes to him; he tells her stories of things that he knows, and things that he has seen, hither and yon, and far-away. For every picture in the stained-glass windows of the castle, he knows a story, and he tells her these, one after the other, listen-to-me. But whenever she asks him a question of the kind-- who are you? Where do you come from? What is your name? Who are your people? He smiles very sadly and asks her to talk for a while, and she tells him her own stories, the ones that she knows. Some she makes up out of her own head, like the one about the harp that loved a lady's hands, or the one about the stalk of wheat that wished to become an oak tree, and some were stories that her father had told her, like the one about little Ida and her flowers, or the one about Hamilar and Ole' Lukoie, the Sleepy Dustman. And she told him all about herself, of her sisters and her father, and funny things that they had done and seen and the places her father had gone. The prince was very clever and wise, and very worldly, and though he seemed quite young, he knew about them all. And after a time he would press her hand and tell her to come and see him again, and she said yes, yes she would, with all of her heart she would indeed! And she would wave to him as she ran off back down the white stone path, the voices of the crickets and the ravens and the last of his words ringing in her ears, fading into memories as her eyes opened and she looked about in the soft white linens of the bed in her beautiful room. And before her eyes were entirely open, she would forget, forget everything, the stories and the Prince and everything he had told her, and all that she had told him, night after night after night.

All that she knows, in the morning, listening to the songs of the meadowlark and the crowing cock, is that she must say no to the Beast again, for her heart belongs to another.

If she only knew him.


End file.
